This game was not initially my concept. The original concept document was about 100 pages long, on the front and back of each page of the proposal. The game was called “something something Harrier” — I don’t remember the previous name. Originally, the game was set in a realistic setting with a jet that shot missiles into the foreground. But with a jet airplane, a game requires a lot of pattern change data to move back and forth across the screen, so I had to simplify the airplane to the character we ultimately used. But then the game loses its impact — at that point, the concept was no longer attractive. So it became a sci-fi game because we had a person flying on the screen. It was a sci-fi game with fantasy elements because I liked the movie The Neverending Story.

The original guy was a person named Ida. And he had a really big head. So, in the game there’s a part where these big heads made of rock appear and I named them after Ida, pronounced I-DA.